Overcoming all hurdles and finding new solutions, Indian Railways is continuing its journey of bringing relief by delivering Liquid Medical Oxygen(LMO) to various states across the country. So far, Indian Railways has delivered more than 17945 MT of LMO in more than 1080 tankers to various states across the country.

lt may be noted that 272 Oxygen Expresses have completed their journey so far and brought relief to various States.

In a scale up of operations which continued till late yesterday night 12 Oxygen Expresses with 969 MT of LMO started their journeys from Cyclone hit Eastern States and beat tough weather to take relief to the Nation.

These 12 Oxygen Expresses include 3 trains for Tamil Nadu, 4 trains for Andhra Pradesh and 1 each for Delhi region, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Assam & Kerala.

Amongst the Southern States, delivery of LMO to Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Telangana crossed 1000 MT each.

Jharkhand received it's First Oxygen Express to become the 15th State to get Oxygen from Railways.

It is Indian Railways endeavour to deliver as much LMO as possible in the shortest time possible to the requesting states.

Oxygen relief by Oxygen Expresses reached out to 15 states namely Uttarakhand, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Haryana, Telangana, Punjab, Kerala, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand and Assam.

Till the time of this release, 614 MT of Oxygen has been offloaded in Maharashtra, nearly 3731 MT in Uttar Pradesh, 633 MT in Madhya Pradesh, 4910 MT in Delhi, 1911 MT in Haryana, 98 MT in Rajasthan, 1653 MT in Karnataka, 320 MT in Uttarakhand, 1158 MT in Tamil Nadu, 929 MT in Andhra Pradesh, 225 MT in Punjab, 246 MT in Kerala, 1312 MT in Telangana, 38 MT in Jharkhand and 160 MT in Assam.

Railways has mapped different routes with Oxygen supply locations and keeps itself ready with any emerging need of the States. States provide tankers to the Indian Railways for bringing LMO.

It may be noted that Oxygen Expresses started their deliveries 32 days back on 24th April in Maharashtra with a load of 126 MT.

Criss crossing the country, Indian Railways is picking up oxygen from places like Hapa , Baroda, Mundra in the West and Rourkela, Durgapur, Tatanagar, Angul in the East and then delivering it to States of Uttarakhand, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Haryana, Telangana, Punjab, Kerala, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh & Assam in complex operational route planning scenarios.

In order to ensure that Oxygen relief reaches in the fastest time possible, Railways is creating new standards and unprecedented benchmarks in running of Oxygen Express Freight Trains. The average speed of these critical Freight trains is way above 55 in most cases over long distances. Running on high priority Green Corridor, with a highest sense of urgency, operational teams of various zones are working round the clock in most challenging circumstances to ensure that Oxygen reaches in fastest possible time frame. Technical stoppages have been reduced to 1 minute for crew changes over different sections.

Tracks are kept open and high alertness is maintained to ensure that Oxygen Express keeps zipping through.

All this is done in a manner that speed of other Freight Operation doesn't get reduced as well.

Running of new Oxygen is a very dynamic exercise and figures keep getting updated all the time. More loaded Oxygen Expresses are expected to start their journeys later in the night.

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DJN/MKV